mony and proportion, with which our stage is too familiar. Each would do his best, not only for himself, but for the general effect. Care and thought would be felt throughout, and a general level of excellence be achieved, which would sustain the illusion and gratify the taste. In time, doubtless, higher merits would be developed. Genius would arise, and be of necessity attracted to a theatre of this stamp. Acting would be dealt with as an art by its professors, an art for the study of which, as Barton Booth said, the longest life is too short: and in the end audiences would also learn to appreciate this truth, and bring the force of intelligent criticism to bear upon the performers. The theatre would then become to the spectators, as it ought to be, not merely the pastime of an idle hour, but a place of study, a whetstone of the imagination and the sympathies, a revealer of the secret springs of character and emotion, and of the subtler beauties of our finest poetry. They would learn at the same time to appreciate the niceties and the difficulties of histrionic art, and by their knowledge be enabled to stimulate merit, and rebuke defect or carelessness, instead of encouraging, as audiences too often do at present, whatever is most false in conception, and meretricious in style. Good actors will not exist without intelligent audiences; and if things are bad upon the stage it is quite as often the audience as the actors who are to blame.

But assuming, as may fairly be done, that a theatre and actors such as we have indicated may both be found, still they will be found to no purpose, unless at the same time some presiding spirit can be found to take the command of both, and to exercise it with forethought and firmness. Herein as it seems to us, lies the crucial difficulty; for it is obvious that, for the manager of such an establishment, a combination is required of such qualities as must at all times be hard to find. An actor he must not be, nor allied to actors, for he must be neither liable to the temptations of personal vanity, nor open to the suspicion of partiality. With a Garrick, a Kemble, or a Macready in the field this requisite might be dispensed with, but even in their case, the fact that they were actors was a positive drawback to them as managers. With any actor of less pre-eminent power, the condition should be absolute. But, though not an actor he must be a good judge of acting, for on him the selection and discipline of the troops with which he has to conduct his campaign must rest. A man of broad and catholic literary taste he must also be,-not wedded to one form of the drama, but open to recognise the real merits of all which deal with actual life and character, as well as with the higher spiritual life and reality of poetical conception. He

must

must be able to cater for all tastes, so that only they are pure and healthy. Artistic feeling for beauty, symmetry, and proportion should be instinctive with him, to enable him to decide on just that amount of scenic illustration, and fulness of mise en scène which should set off, but not encroach upon, the actor's work. He should also be conspicuous for savoir-faire, and force of character, for he has to govern men and women, sensitive in temperament, and jealous of their position, who will never surrender their own whims and vanities except to a determined will, wise-timed tact, and acknowledged purity of intention. Practical business habits will be no less essential to establish the completeness of organisation, and to control the ever-recurring proclivity to waste, always predominant enough in every sphere, but never more so than in a theatre.

For these and other minor qualities, on which it is unnecessary to dilate, it would be idle to seek among any theatrical managers of the present day. Of them it may be said, as a race, that their only aim is to fill their theatre at the smallest cost, without regard to the quality of the attraction. They will follow any vicious public taste, but have no ambition to correct or elevate it. As to any settled policy-either as to the actors they enlist, or the class of pieces they produce, this, except in the rarest instances, is never dreamed of. Where a different system has prevailed, and good pieces carefully acted and placed upon the stage have been the rule, as in the case of the Prince of Wales's Theatre, the best results have followed. Actors, audience, and manager have all gained, and this to an extent which justifies the warmest hopes for any theatre, where the same rule shall be applied upon a wider scale, and with a higher aim. There, the effort has been proportioned to the available means. The plays are good of their kind, the actors equal to the arena they have to work in, and the tasks committed to their care, and the harmonious and agreeable effect which results delights a not too exacting audience, and fills the manager's exchequer. Apply the same methods on a higher scale, and there can be no question that similar results will ensue. Shakspeare, for example, in such a way, that the audience shall, as Shakspeare expected them to do, work their thoughts' to eke out the inevitable imperfections of all scenic representation :do not make the poet's work a mere vehicle for the scene-painter's and costumier's art, and drown all imaginative sympathy in the confusion and noise of elaborate scenery and awkward supernumeraries-let intellect and imagination have full play, and keep mere physical stimulus in the back-ground, and even Shakspeare will not spell ruin,' which managers, who have no

Act

idea of Shakspeare or of any other writer above the level of a Boucicault or a Halliday, are so fond of telling the world that he does. Presented as they present him, how should he spell anything but ruin? Without one actor or actress who knows the value of a blank verse line, not to speak of their inability to form the feeblest conception of a Prospero, or a Miranda, a Constance, or a King John-what but failure must ensue on an attempt to embody in the grossest material forms, and with the clumsiest emphasis, the subtlest spirit of the finest poetry?

Such a manager as we aim at, will follow no such impracticable course. He will proportion his ends to his means, and never commit the absurdity of producing the plays of Shakspeare or of any other first-class dramatist, until he is sure of artists equal to the task, or at least in thorough sympathy with it. Below this line a whole world of excellent dramas exists, or may be created, for which the necessary gifts in actor or actress either exist, or may very readily be cultivated. Higher work will come in time; if the conditions for its development can only be established and permanently maintained. The dramatic instinct will not die out of men, as long as the race survives. The dignity of the actor's art was never more sure of a recognition from the public, than it is at this moment. Make it in its practical exercise,—and this is now merely a question of the internal arrangement of theatres, and of theatrical management— a vocation which men and women of education and pure habits can pursue without forfeiture of self-respect, and the ranks of the profession will speedily be recruited by persons of ability and character, who would in time drive into their fitting obscurity the incapacity, and unseemly impudence which disgrace so many of our stages. But there is, we are assured, only one way of doing this, and it is by giving our artists a fit arena for the exercise of their art in a theatre where the artistic spirit reigns, and where intelligence and high principle are at the head of affairs. Let such a theatre be once firmly established, and there need be no fear that England will yet be as famous for her acted, as she is for her written drama.

But everything, as we have said, will and must depend on the governing mind which shall undertake the office of controlling and directing such a theatre as we have indicated. To find it must be difficult; impossible, we cannot believe. The first step towards supplying a want is to recognise it. Let this be fairly seen and understood, and we feel confident that those, who are now agitating to remove from us the reproach of a degraded stage, will find some one who may combine, if not all, at least most of the essential qualities

for

for the task. But there must be no division of responsibility, no limitation of his power, no interference by committees of consultation or of any other kind. These can lead only to jobbing, to confusion, to vacillation and ultimate failure. The principle of a limited monarchy is as inapplicable to the administration of a theatre as that of a republic. It is like a great family, or a great army, where the central authority must be absolute, and the only safeguard is the decisive action of an intelligent despot. Without such a head the complicated machine will inevitably fall out of gear. But invest the leader with full powers, and he will be unfit indeed for his place if he cannot select wisely his own staff for either counsel or action.

ART. II.-The Works of John Hookham Frere in Verse and Prose, now first collected, with a Prefatory Memoir, by his Nephews, W. E. and Sir Bartle Frere. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1872.

MR.

R. JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE may be regarded as a type of a remarkable class of men, of whom we have hardly any representatives in the present day. Of ancient lineage, a fine classical scholar, well read in English literature, with a keen and polished wit, and early brought into Parliament and official life, he combined a practical knowledge of the world with that love of letters and refinement which distinguished the statesmen of the last generation. His literary abilities were of the highest order. He was one of the chief writers in the Anti-Jacobin;' his poem of Whistlecraft was the model upon which Lord Byron framed Beppo' and 'Don Juan; and his translation of the plays of Aristophanes is a real work of genius, being, perhaps, the most perfect representation of any ancient poet in a modern language. He was the friend of Pitt and Canning; and the high estimation in which he was held by Scott, Byron, Coleridge, and his other illustrious contemporaries, appears from the Memoirs and literature of the period, in which his name constantly occurs. But to the present generation he is comparatively unknown. To this several causes have contributed. During the last twenty-five years of his life he lived in retirement at Malta. He was never ambitious of literary fame; he cared only for the appreciation of cultivated judges; and his circumstances dispensed with the necessity of appealing to the favour of the multitude. Most of his works were privately

printed,

printed, and were difficult and almost impossible to procure, while others had never been printed at all. Under these circumstances we congratulate his nephews, Mr. W. E. Frere and Sir Bartle Frere, upon the good service they have rendered to literature, by making a complete collection of the works of their uncle. They have prefixed an interesting biography, which will enable us to present to our readers a sketch of Mr. Frere's public and private life, with a brief account of his principal writings. We do this the more willingly, as Mr. Frere was one of the distinguished men who co-operated with the late Mr. Murray in establishing the 'Quarterly Review.'

John Hookham Frere was born in London on the 21st of May, 1769, the year which witnessed the birth of Napoleon and Wellington. Both his father and mother possessed rare intellectual gifts. His father, John Frere, a country gentleman of an old family settled in the eastern counties for many generations, lived on his estate of Roydon Hall, near Diss, in Norfolk. He had contended with Paley for the honours of Senior Wrangler in 1763, and was placed second in the list. He was High Sheriff of Suffolk in 1776, when he composed a High Tory sermon, which his chaplain preached for the edification of a Whig judge. It was pronounced to be an excellent sermon, much better than judges usually got from High Sheriff's Chaplains.' Mr. John Frere represented Norwich in 1799; but he did not neglect literature or science. 'He was an active member of the Royal Society, and of the principal scientific and antiquarian associations in London, and occasionally contributed a paper to their transactions, or to the "Gentleman's Magazine," then the usual vehicle for publishing the less formal and elaborate class of scientific or literary compositions.'

Mr. Frere's mother was the only child of Mr. John Hookham, a rich London merchant. Her own reading in early life had been directed by Mr. William Stevens, the intimate friend of Bishop Horne, and of Jones of Nayland, a ripe Greek and Hebrew scholar, and one of the most learned laymen of his day. The catalogue of books which he drew up for the young heiress, and which she seems, from her note-book, to have carefully read and studied, would probably astonish the promoters of modern ladies' colleges by the ponderous, though varied, nature of the reading prescribed, embracing almost every branch of what an erudite and pious High Churchman of Johnson's days would consider

*We learn from the Preface that we are indebted to Mr. W. E. Frere for the collection and preparation for the press of his uncle's works, and to Sir Bartle Frere for the biographical sketch prefixed to them.

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